The turmoil of success
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It’s not easy being a rising star and Deepika Padukone is facing the turmoil of success. Her film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani with Ranbir Kapoor is on the anvil of hitting the movie screens and already promos have started airing on televisions.
It’s a pretty big budget film being produced under the banner of Karan Johar. And since Ranbir is there, it has a life of its own. Even the making of the movie was news considering that Deepika and Ranbir had had an affair in the past and the break up had been sour, if not bitter.
That they should come together had been a scoop of sorts at the time but nothing untoward happened during the shooting. Among the many grand things planned around the movie was also one which involved a world tour and according to one news report they were going to go all over United States where there were Indians in large numbers.
But then unfortunately, Deepika ran up against Shah Rukh Khan. She is acting with him in a movie called Chennai Express, directed by Rohit Shetty, the most successful director in Bollywood today. It is a movie which Shah Rukh is looking at to give him a superhit which will match up to the numbers that Salman Khan ratchets up at the box office.
Apparently Shah Rukh told Deepika that the movie needs to come out on Eid and that means she would have to focus on it completely to make the deadline. She had no option but to relent. The end result of all this was that the tour has been called off. Strangely, the man who will be most unhappy with all this is Karan Johar, one of Shah Rukh’s closest friends in the industry for a long time.
Wrong target
Shabana Azmi is not known to mince her words, especially when it comes to her pet subjects like feminism. For some time now, she’s been railing against how women are depicted in films. Following a brutal rape in Delhi in December which outraged all of India, she and Priyanka Chopra were panelists in a discussion on a news channel.
Shabana took issue with heroines exposing their body and being part of item numbers. Priyanka said that she saw no problems in doing it. A minor argument erupted. Shabana has often been a target of intolerance, most famously for the movie Fire which had a lesbian scene.
Right wing parties had agitated against the movie. It is therefore a little perplexing that she herself is so rigid and intolerant when it comes to causes close to her. Recently, when a song with semi-lewd lyrics from a just released movie I Don’t Luv You started airing on television, Shabana went on the attack.
She tweeted, ‘I cannot believe that the song Ishq ki Ma ki.. has been written by a woman Pallavi Mishra. Revolting, shameful, disgusting. Condemnable.’
There was only one problem. It was not Pallavi Mishra who wrote it. Mishra told the media that she had indeed written some songs for the movie but this was not one of them. And that Shabana should “do her research” before making personal attacks.
It pays to take risks
Shakti Kapoor’s equity in Bollywood has not been very high for some time, but it was enough to get his daughter Shraddha Kapoor. Unfortunately for her, her first film Teen Patti which released in 2010 bombed at the box office. She was just 21 at the time and it was a movie that starred Amitabh Bachchan which means something.
But it did enough to get her one of the best breaks that an aspiring actress could ask for. Yashraj Productions, the biggest banner in Bollywood, signed her for a three-movie contract. The first of the three, Luv Ka The End, released in 2011 and fate once again dealt its cruel hand.
The movie, which targeted the young audience, sank without a trace. Two flops in a row would have been easy to handle if Yashraj had hurried with the next two films of her contract. But they kept her in limbo without announcing any projects. And then came calling Mahesh Bhatt who was looking for an actress to play the lead in his remake of Aashiqui.
Shraddha had to make a choice — to take a gamble with the Bhatts or stay in the safe confines of Yashraj who would sooner or later float a film with her. She decided to take the plunge, and broke her contract to act in Aashiqui 2. And it has turned out to be the correct decision with the film going on to become a hit, her first after about four years in the industry.
And what’s more, it has suddenly made her an in-demand actress who can now pick and choose her films. No wonder that nowadays she can’t stop speaking about how happy she is that she took the risk. In one interview she attributed the decision to a “gut feeling”. Let’s hope the feeling continues.
No tantrums
For some time now, there have been persistent rumours that Priyanka Chopra is being not such a nice person on the sets of Gunday. She is the most experienced star in the cast which has opposite her Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. Gossip columns have been writing about Priyanka constantly harps on her seniority to her male co-stars who are both newcomers to the industry. Adding to her star-status is the fact that even the director is a newcomer.
But it turns out that these rumours might not be true. Recently, Arjun Kapoor who is on publicity overdrive to promote his film Aurangzeb was heard commenting on Priyanka’s supposed behaviour.
He said that Priyanka had no starry airs at all and all these rumours were just the regular figments of imaginations of gossip hounds. He did however say that he continues to call Priyanka ‘Madam’ in jest because when he first entered Bollywood he was an assistant director in the movie Salaam-e-Ishq in which she was acting. And he would often signal her when the shot was ready by asking ‘Madam’ to come.
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